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Florida, ID theft ring busted

Last week Sumter County Sheriff’s Office busted a 3 people ID theft ring in Gainesville Florida.
This wasn’t very sophisticated scheme, 2 homeless and a young guy with laptop and a custom id card printer. Homeless woman, wearing a poorly fitted wig that itself catches attention tried to cash a worthless check while the homeless man was waiting in the bank parking lot outside. This reminds me a Seinfeld episode where Newman and Kramer tried to run a rickshaw business using homeless as drivers. Looks these con artists were equally successful.
Allegedly Jessica Renee Lega, 31 shown in Bank of America branch in late Friday afternoon, she was wearing the poorly fitted wig. She was recognized by the bank staff as the same woman who tried to cash a check the day before. At that time she wasn’t wearing a wig and she used different Colorado ID card with another name. Security cameras also recorded Sammy Wayne Langford, 42 waiting in a car in front of the branch both times the woman visited the bank.
Upon the couple arrest Lega was charged with two counts of criminal use of personal identification information, two counts of organized fraud and one count of grand theft while Langford was charged with two counts of organized fraud.
During the interrogation investigators found out that Lega and Langford were hired by another individual to commit the fraud. After the warrant was granted by the judge detectives raided an apartment where 21 years old Cody Len Jenkins resided. Police secured a laptop, plastic card printer, card reader and encoder along with some storage devices. Jenkins was arrested and charged for organized fraud and possession of instruments for counterfeiting driver’s licenses and ID cards.
While the story could be a script for class B comedy it also shows how little is needed to attempt a fraud and how determined some individuals could be to commit it.